Ubuntu Karmic sucks for me. Considering a new distro.

[linuxminded]

Greeting to everyone on the Debian Forums.

I just downloaded and installed Ubuntu 9.10 yesterday and experienced a rather large letdown.

I like the KDE desktop. It's now totally unusable. Gnome has a few quirks that I suppose I could get used to.

I think it's a good reason to do some distro shopping.

I noticed that Debian Lenny was in development for 22 months. I think this sounds good. I'm getting turned off by Ubuntu's 6 month cycle. (seems too rushed)

Anyway, Does someone here want to give me a Debian sales pitch?

I've narrowed my choices down to Debian and Arch.

[debil]

Anyway, Does someone here want to give me a Debian sales pitch?

Debian is free, so no sales pitches are necessary . You could check out this for people's reasons for choosing Debian.

[Pick2]

Arch is a "Rolling" distro , you constantly update it as you go. You get some breakage. If you want a rolling distro , try sidex. It's Debian sid (?) with a few tweaks and they take better care not to break things. Either one , you'll have to stay glued to their forums before updating to keep breakage down , but you'll have a bleeding edge software distro.
Most people that run Debian for desktop use follow the testing branch , currently Squeeze. I run Debian Etch ( Old Stable ) and Debian Lenny ( Stable) 'Cause I like things ... Stable ... to offset my mental instabilities

[fsmithred]

Debian (stable) is boring. Once you get it set up the way you want, you're pretty much done with administration work. (assuming it's a home system and not enterprise). Updates hardly ever break anything. In fact, I don't think an update has ever broken anything for me, except when lenny was still in testing.

[kevin01123]

There are backports available, and if you need something that isn't, aptitude build-dep and ./configure are there to assist you.

[debianized]

Anyway, Does someone here want to give me a Debian sales pitch?

My mom, at 71 years of age, decided to learn how to use a computer for her birthday. I put her on Ubuntu. I would get calls from time to time with assorted issues she was having. On her 74th birthday, this past July, I bought her a new computer and flat screen monitor, and switched her to Debian Lenny. I NEVER hear so much as a peep out of her regarding issues with the computer or things not working. Lenny IS 'Grandma ready.'

[AdrianTM]

Sales pitch? How much are you willing to pay?

[hazel]

Lenny IS 'Grandma ready.'

That's why this old lady likes it !
Arch has the advantage of having a very simple internal structure compared with most distros. This makes it 1) easy to understand; 2) fast. The disadvantage is, it's bleeding edge. If you like the idea of Arch but don't like bleeding edge, you could try Crux, which has the same basic philosophy but is more stable.

[Absent Minded]

Debian is secure, stable and faster than most all of the other distros I have used... What more could I want? I just have a small little 800Mhz box that I use it on with only 512MB of RAM. I NEVER have any toubles with the stable branch and even with testing it is more stable than any other Linux I have tried to use.

[mamaCoche.net]

Anyway, Does someone here want to give me a Debian sales pitch?

I've narrowed my choices down to Debian and Arch.

Linuxminded--

Aside from the above posts, here is Debian's "sales pitch":

• Reasons to choose Debian
  
  About Debian

By the way, welcome to the forums... And thank you for choosing Debian.

--Michael

[canci]

Debian would be THE overall distro if it only had a nanny mode that installs a system pretty much like LinuxMint. The "Do you want me to install that proprietary nvidia?" or "Would you like me to try and detect your WLAN? We can even use Windows drivers if it doesn't work". Or "Would you like to have all codecs available on Mother Earth(TM)? We'll add the repo, just read the licensing first".

Other than that, Debian really is THE ultimate distro for everyone.

I think Debian should introduce a new meta-package system where you just run a netinst and say: "I wanna like, uhm, that KDE and bling bling, and watch all videos, do some writing. And I hate console, so let's make it a nice bootscreen."

or you say: "Realtime kernel and a bunch of sound apps, please"

The maintainers of these meta-packages would only take care of things not breaking or uninstalling other packages and customized themes maybe.

And no, I'm not a noob, just that it's really hard to set up things when you just need a desktop install really quickly.

[Lou]

I use antiX (antix.mepis.org), it's a light variation of Debian, it got everything you need, it's a Debian derivative so you use apt-get/aptitude, it comes with stable/testing sources.list by default, but you can modify it to your liking (you can leave the default or go to Lenny, Squeeze, Sid), i chose Lenny. Youtube/video is working perfectly and it comes with IceWM and Fluxbox by default. Basically, it's a Debian configured distro, light and fast, took me 15 minutes to install and no headaches. All i did was purge things like conky, rox-filer, Fluxbox, left IceWM, etc). It also comes with a minimal Base CD you install what you want. Not bad!

[Coco]

Debian would be THE overall distro if it only had a nanny mode that installs a system pretty much like LinuxMint. The "Do you want me to install that proprietary nvidia?" or "Would you like me to try and detect your WLAN? We can even use Windows drivers if it doesn't work". Or "Would you like to have all codecs available on Mother Earth(TM)? We'll add the repo, just read the licensing first".

Other than that, Debian really is THE ultimate distro for everyone.

I think Debian should introduce a new meta-package system where you just run a netinst and say: "I wanna like, uhm, that KDE and bling bling, and watch all videos, do some writing. And I hate console, so let's make it a nice bootscreen."

or you say: "Realtime kernel and a bunch of sound apps, please"

The maintainers of these meta-packages would only take care of things not breaking or uninstalling other packages and customized themes maybe.

And no, I'm not a noob, just that it's really hard to set up things when you just need a desktop install really quickly.

That's what ubuntu and mint are for!

And to the OP, if its a home system I suggest you go with Debian testing (Squeeze). Its relatively up to date, stable and it can be configured to be a rolling release easily. Arch just seems to much work.

[pekka_vanttaukselta]

I liked arch ,but pacman is slow ,unstable ......
and Opera can get only AUR reposity

[exodist]

I noticed that Debian Lenny was in development for 22 months. I think this sounds good. I'm getting turned off by Ubuntu's 6 month cycle. (seems too rushed)

/WAVES


I am here. This should sell it to you!

If you prefer stability.. DEBIAN
If you prefer a flashy bug that hasnt been fixed in 3 release cycles but has a new prettier shade of crap brown.. Ubuntu

[canci]

That's what ubuntu and mint are for!

Well, maybe Mint, and then only if you use Mint's update manager instead of Synaptic. But Ubuntu surely isn't. It's more like Sidux in this respect, thus totally not acceptable for the person who just expects things to work.

My problem here is that Debian just works once you installed everything, but that sometimes I do not have the time. This would be solved by introducing more meta-packages.

Like for instance:

debian-full-mythv - with all the codecs in the world and infrared, bluetooth and whatever you need. A meta package that would be a one-command install for multimedia boxes and such. It should have a nice framebuffer boot up which would look good on a big TV. OK, this might be a problem to maintain, since the kernel will be different.

Many ppl would appreciate that - after all, setting all this up on Debian takes a whole weekend. And don't tell me to use mythbuntu, these distros are just plain unstable.

We already have this with things like the "kde" metapackage, where you get pretty much everything.

EDIT: I've just realized that this wouldn't be an option due to Debian's philosophy. Maybe if there was another repo like debian multimedia?

[dust hill resident]

Even though Debian Lenny was in development for 22 months, it still has a lot of annoying and obvious bugs (mostly in gnome stuff).
If you're disappointed with the state of your current distro, I suggest that you try a bunch of different ones to see if you like one better.

In 2008, after using Ubuntu for two years, I began to experience problems. I decided to migrate to Debian (at the time, the version was Etch). I've been mostly happy since then, but Lenny has been disappointing (due to the bugs I mentioned earlier).

[nadir]

canci, you wrote something like "debian would be * the* overall distro if it would have got metapackages"
- sure, you wrote a bit more than that, i dont want to qoute all of it.

if it would be that way it wouldnt be like debian no more, or not? nannying? (depends on the nanny...)
-i know three metapackages (kde, xfce and gnome). I dont know myths-tv. What other meta-packages are there availiable on mint (or other distros) you got in mind? I never had the feeling i would be missing something like a metapackage - au contraire, the mentioned one i avoid like the cholera.
-As mint is also based on the ubuntu-repos i dont understand how the OP should get rid of his problems if using mint instead of ubuntu, but i dont understand that much of that.
Thanks if you clear that up a bit (for me).

[nadir]

@OP: The problem is: i dont know arch, so i cant give a good answer to your original question. as i got debian installed its given that i like it and would recommend it. atm i got ubuntu-10 (and mint-gloria) installed too and like both. so i dont understand your problem with ubuntu, seems much better than before to me. perhaps you should try to get rid of the metapackages and it will work like a charme

[mojoman]

If you're choosing between Debian and Arch you could have a look at this.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27965

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=383327

If you ask me, choosing between Debian and Arch ain't no choice at all.